{"id":3016,"date":"2022-01-23T10:07:49","date_gmt":"2022-01-23T09:07:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/still.inbetweenartfilm.com\/?page_id=3016"},"modified":"2022-03-02T15:28:06","modified_gmt":"2022-03-02T14:28:06","slug":"the-earthbound-or-the-heart-of-a-tree","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/still.inbetweenartfilm.com\/en\/the-earthbound-or-the-heart-of-a-tree\/","title":{"rendered":"The Earthbound, or The Heart of a Tree"},"content":{"rendered":"

[et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ disabled_on=”off|off|off” admin_label=”section” _builder_version=”4.9.4″ custom_margin=”0px||||false|false” custom_padding=”0px||||false|false” locked=”off” collapsed=”off” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_row column_structure=”3_5,2_5″ use_custom_gutter=”on” gutter_width=”1″ admin_label=”row” module_id=”odd_columnss” module_class=”gallery_row” _builder_version=”4.9.4″ background_color=”#FFFFFF” background_enable_image=”off” parallax=”on” parallax_method=”off” width=”95%” max_width=”95%” custom_margin=”0px|auto||auto|false|false” custom_padding=”0px|0px||0px|false|true” border_color_top=”#fd544b” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_column type=”3_5″ _builder_version=”4.9.3″ custom_padding=”|20px|||false|false” global_colors_info=”{}” custom_padding__hover=”|||”][et_pb_divider show_divider=”off” _builder_version=”4.11.4″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][\/et_pb_divider][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.14.7″ _module_preset=”default” text_font=”ABC Web regular|||on|||||” text_text_color=”#000000″ text_font_size=”22px” text_letter_spacing=”1px” header_font=”ABC Web regular||||||||” header_font_size=”20px” header_4_font=”ABC Web Italic||||||||” header_4_font_size=”15px” custom_margin=”10px||10px||true|false” global_colors_info=”{}”]The Earthbound, or The Heart of a Tree[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.14.7″ _module_preset=”default” text_font=”ABC Web regular||on||||||” text_text_color=”#000000″ header_font=”ABC Web regular||||||||” header_font_size=”20px” header_4_font=”ABC Web Italic||||||||” header_4_font_size=”15px” custom_margin=”10px||10px||true|false” locked=”off” global_colors_info=”{}”]by Teresa Castro[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.9.4″ _module_preset=”default” text_font=”ABC Web regular||||||||” text_text_color=”#000000″ text_font_size=”20px” custom_margin=”20px||20px||true|false” global_colors_info=”{}”]<\/p>\n

Teresa Castro examines Clare Langan\u2019s film The Heart of a Tree<\/i> (2020) while situating it in a wider conversation about the speculative possibilities of science fiction in imagining humanity\u2019s future amidst the major threats posed the environmental crises facing the world.<\/p>\n

[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_image src=”https:\/\/still.inbetweenartfilm.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/1-4.jpg” alt=”Clare Langan, The Heart of a Tree, 2020. Photograph, Digital Print on Archival Photographic Paper. Edition of 6. Courtesy of the artist. Fondazione In Between Art Film Collection” title_text=”Clare Langan, The Heart of a Tree, 2020. Photograph, Digital Print on Archival Photographic Paper. Edition of 6. Courtesy of the artist. Fondazione In Between Art Film Collection” module_id=”img1″ _builder_version=”4.14.7″ _module_preset=”default” width=”70%” max_width=”70%” global_colors_info=”{}”][\/et_pb_image][et_pb_text module_id=”tptext” _builder_version=”4.14.8″ _module_preset=”default” text_font=”ABC Web regular||||||||” text_font_size=”16px” custom_margin=”10px||||false|false” global_colors_info=”{}”]<\/p>\n

Clare Langan, The Heart of a Tree<\/i>, 2020. Photograph, Digital Print on Archival Photographic Paper. Edition of 6. Courtesy of the artist. Fondazione In Between Art Film Collection<\/p>\n

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\u201cIn science fiction it\u2019s always about now,\u201d advocates Canadian writer Margaret Atwood, adding: \u201cWhat else could it be about? There is no future. There are many possibilities, but we do not know which one we are going to have.\u201d<\/span>1<\/sup><\/span> Atwood is right of course: science fiction has always been about the present, as Clare Langan\u2019s The Heart of a Tree<\/i> (2020) perfectly illustrates. Set in a barren treeless landscape, the film\u2019s inhospitable world evokes, at first glance, what could be a foreign, unwelcoming planet\u2014a planet to which three astronaut-like figures cling with great difficulty, challenged by vertiginous climbs and the gusts of high winds. Is this a world they came to colonize once Earth became uninhabitable? Or could they be roaming Earth itself? Despite the uncanny upside-down perspectives, the loss of the sense of scale and the puzzling reverse motion of water, the lunar landscape feels<\/i> terrestrial. It could be Earth: an estranged Earth, calcinated and gray, enveloped in the darkness of ashes and plunged into an eternal winter. In sum, a planet radically transfigured by climate change and environmental collapse. A mineral wasteland with no trees, no shrubs, no visible flora, except for the algae-like seedlings that the three humans carefully plant in the shore of a black sand beach. The mysterious ritual they perform, at times scanning the wind and the soil with perfectly synchronized moves, seems to confirm that this must be Earth after all. The astronauts are no space travelers: they resemble what French philosopher Bruno Latour has named \u201cthe Earthbound.\u201d<\/span>2<\/sup><\/span> Distinct from the human as Anthropos, the Earthbound (a new people coming into being today) bear witness to a major anthropological change: the refusal of the outdated Cartesian view according to which humans (culture) and nature are distinct.<\/p>\n

THE HEART OF A TREE<\/i> IS THE THIRD IN A SERIES OF FIVE FILMS GATHERED UNDER THE TITLE NEW EDEN<\/i>, EXPLORING THE MAJOR THREATS POSED BY THE ENVIRONMENTAL CRISES FACING THE WORLD. WE CAN SEE THEM AS CLIMATE FICTIONS, ARTISTIC WORKS ENGAGING WITH THE CLIMATE EMERGENCY AND OFTEN SPECULATING ON HUMANITY\u2019S IMAGINABLE FUTURES, AS WELL AS ON THE POSSIBILITIES FOR STORYTELLING IN THE ERA OF GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE.<\/p>\n

[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_image src=”https:\/\/still.inbetweenartfilm.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/2-4.jpg” alt=”Clare Langan, The Heart of a Tree, 2020. Film Still, Digital Print on Archival Photographic Paper. Edition of 6. Courtesy of the artist. Fondazione In Between Art Film Collection” title_text=”Clare Langan, The Heart of a Tree, 2020. Film Still, Digital Print on Archival Photographic Paper. Edition of 6. Courtesy of the artist. Fondazione In Between Art Film Collection” module_id=”img1″ _builder_version=”4.14.7″ _module_preset=”default” width=”70%” max_width=”70%” global_colors_info=”{}”][\/et_pb_image][et_pb_text module_id=”tptext” _builder_version=”4.14.7″ _module_preset=”default” text_font=”ABC Web regular||||||||” text_font_size=”16px” custom_margin=”10px||||false|false” global_colors_info=”{}”]<\/p>\n

Clare Langan, The Heart of a Tree<\/i>, 2020. Film Still, Digital Print on Archival Photographic Paper. Edition of 6. Courtesy of the artist. Fondazione In Between Art Film Collection<\/p>\n

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The Heart of a Tree<\/i> is the third in a series of five films gathered under the title New Eden<\/i>, exploring the major threats posed by the environmental crises facing the world.<\/span>3<\/sup><\/span> We can see them as climate fictions, artistic works engaging with the climate emergency and often speculating on humanity\u2019s imaginable futures, as well as on the possibilities for storytelling in the era of global climate change. As a genre affiliated with science fiction, climate fictions are resolutely about the present. To quote another science fiction writer, the US Kim Stanley Robinson, climate fiction \u201cis the realism of our time .\u00a0.\u00a0. it gives us metaphors and meaning-systems to help conceptualize our moment.\u201d<\/span>4<\/sup><\/span> It might appear surprising to think of Langan\u2019s films and their poetic impressions as realistic; the graphic starkness of the filmmaker\u2019s black-and-white shots that sometimes verge toward abstraction (like in The Heart of a Tree<\/i>), as well as her atmospheric use of sound and music, seem very far from realism. But the latter refers here to a way of thinking that acknowledges that the planet, impelled by intense human activities, is undergoing a profound transformation. In this sense, Langan\u2019s work couldn\u2019t be more realistic.<\/p>\n

[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_image src=”https:\/\/still.inbetweenartfilm.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/3-4.jpg” alt=”Clare Langan, Future Primal, 2018. Film still, Digital Print on Archival Photographic Paper. Edition of 6. Courtesy of the artist.” title_text=”Clare Langan, Future Primal, 2018. Film still, Digital Print on Archival Photographic Paper. Edition of 6. Courtesy of the artist.” module_id=”img1″ _builder_version=”4.14.7″ _module_preset=”default” width=”70%” max_width=”70%” global_colors_info=”{}”][\/et_pb_image][et_pb_text module_id=”tptext” _builder_version=”4.14.8″ _module_preset=”default” text_font=”ABC Web regular||||||||” text_font_size=”16px” custom_margin=”10px||||false|false” global_colors_info=”{}”]<\/p>\n

Clare Langan, Future Primal<\/i>, 2018. Film still, Digital Print on Archival Photographic Paper. Edition of 6. Courtesy of the artist.<\/p>\n

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More obviously, Langan\u2019s New Eden<\/i> series brings to mind anticipatory and speculative fabulations: a type of fiction that not only manages to unfold new worlds, but also brings forth possibilities that are already contained in our own world\u2014like the Earthbound people. It\u2019s in this speculative sense that we can approach The Heart of a Tree<\/i>: What would it mean to live in a treeless planet? A planet with less available oxygen, shrouded in perpetual smog; a planet where large amounts of carbon would run into the oceans, causing extreme acidification; a planet of eroded soils, where neither plants nor animals nor fungi could survive? Life might have begun in the ocean (the \u201cprimordial soup\u201d that we glimpse at the end of the film and that Langan evokes in Future Primal<\/i> [2018]), but without early plant life, the oxygenation of Earth\u2019s atmosphere would not have happened. As Italian philosopher Emanuele Coccia observes, plants are the \u201cmost subtle artisans of our cosmos.\u201d<\/span>5<\/sup><\/span> Trees are the breath of life, the living partners without whom human life would not be possible. According to Langan\u2019s film, life in a treeless planet would mean a continuing attempt to grow trees again. Nothing would be more vital, if not sacred, as hinted at by an intriguing shot where the three human figures stare toward the sky, briefly catching sight of an eerie apparition: The ghost of a tree? Throughout the film, the humans proceed with the utmost care, as if performing a meticulously devised ritual. They seem to be simultaneously grieving with Earth and seeking to reconstruct life in a ruined, but still living, planet. The Earthbound don\u2019t situate human life outside or above nature: they think of it in ecologically embodied and embedded ways. The Earthbound are about attachment\u2014as Latour writes, \u201cI have chosen Earthbound\u2014\u2018bound\u2019 as if bound by a spell, as well as \u2018bound\u2019 in the sense of heading somewhere, thereby designating the joint attempt to reach the Earth while being unable to escape from it.\u201d<\/span>6<\/sup><\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_image src=”https:\/\/still.inbetweenartfilm.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/4-4.jpg” alt=”Clare Langan, The Heart of a Tree, 2020. Film Still, Digital Print on Archival Photographic Paper. Edition of 6. Courtesy of the artist. Fondazione In Between Art Film Collection” title_text=”Clare Langan, The Heart of a Tree, 2020. Film Still, Digital Print on Archival Photographic Paper. Edition of 6. Courtesy of the artist. Fondazione In Between Art Film Collection” module_id=”img1″ _builder_version=”4.14.7″ _module_preset=”default” width=”70%” max_width=”70%” global_colors_info=”{}”][\/et_pb_image][et_pb_text module_id=”tptext” _builder_version=”4.14.7″ _module_preset=”default” text_font=”ABC Web regular||||||||” text_font_size=”16px” custom_margin=”10px||||false|false” global_colors_info=”{}”]<\/p>\n

Clare Langan, The Heart of a Tree<\/i>, 2020. Film Still, Digital Print on Archival Photographic Paper. Edition of 6. Courtesy of the artist. Fondazione In Between Art Film Collection<\/p>\n

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Paraphrasing Donna Haraway, trees (like the corals that the US philosopher considers in Staying with the Trouble<\/i>) \u201chelped bring the Earthbound into consciousness of the Anthropocene in the first place.\u201d<\/span>7<\/sup><\/span> Deforestation (in particular of the Amazon rainforest, fantasmatically conceived as \u201cthe lungs of the world\u201d) and bleached corals encapsulate the exterminating forces that shape our current times, with its swathes of predatory industries. But trees\u2014and especially forests, understood as multispecies forms of collective, cooperative, and ungovernable life\u2014are also the token of a different relationship to the world, one where the boundaries of the Anthropos become porous.<\/span>8<\/sup><\/span> If trees are the conspicuously absent visual element in The Heart of a Tree<\/i>, the forest is there as a latent, productive desire, surging up in the shape of the unusual collection of algae-like shrubs carefully planted by the sea. In this sense, The Heart of a Tree<\/i>\u2019s grieving dimension should not be mistaken for a dystopian vision. As suggested by the three human figures in the film, mourning the irreversible loss of pristine waters, airs, and lands goes hand in hand with envisaging our dependence on the countless others that surround us. The Heart of a Tree<\/i> is about the very possibility of life in a damaged planet.<\/p>\n

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Teresa Castro<\/b> is Associate Professor in Film Studies at the New\u00a0Sorbonne University \u2013 Paris 3.\u00a0She was a post-doctoral researcher at the\u00a0Mus\u00e9e du quai Branly\u00a0\u2013 Jacques Chirac, Paris, and at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin. A significant part of her recent research focuses on the links between film and animism, eco-criticism and vegetal life forms in visual culture. In this context, she published \u201cThe Mediated Plant\u201d (e-flux, 2019), \u201cQueer Botanics\u201d (MAL – A Journal of Sexuality and Erotics, 2019), co-edited the collective book\u00a0Puissance du v\u00e9g\u00e9tal et cin\u00e9ma animiste.\u00a0La vitalit\u00e9 r\u00e9v\u00e9l\u00e9e par la technique<\/i>\u00a0(Dijon: Presses du r\u00e9el, 2020) and participated in the exhibition\u00a0Plant Revolution!<\/i>\u00a0at Centro Internacional das Artes Jos\u00e9 de Guimar\u00e3es, 2019.<\/p>\n

Clare Langan<\/b> is an Irish artist. Her works have been shown in solo and group exhibitions at institutions such as B3 Biennal of the Moving Image, Frankfurt; Busan Biennale 2010; Singapore Biennial 2008; Lyon Biennale 2007; Museum of Modern Art, Tel Aviv; Tate Liverpool; Liverpool Biennial; and 25th Bienal de Sao Paulo, among others. Her films have been awarded with prizes such as Prix Videoformes 2014 | Conseil G\u00e9n\u00e9ral du Puy de D\u00f4me\u00a0at\u00a0VIDEOFORMES 2014; and Principle Prize at the Oberhausen International Short Film Festival, among others.<\/p>\n

[\/et_pb_tab][et_pb_tab title=”Notes” _builder_version=”4.14.7″ _module_preset=”default” body_font=”ABC Web regular||||||||” tab_font=”ABC Web regular||||||||” tab_font_size=”14px” tab_letter_spacing=”2px” background_color=”RGBA(0,0,0,0)” background_enable_color=”on” overflow-y=”auto” global_colors_info=”{}”]<\/p>\n

1 <\/span>Lisa Allardice, \u201cMargaret Atwood: \u2018I am not a prophet. Science fiction is really about now,\u2019\u201d The Guardian<\/i>, January 20, 2018, available online.<\/p>\n

2 Bruno Latour, \u201cWar of the Worlds: Humans against Earthbound,\u201d Facing Gaia: A New Enquiry into Natural Religion<\/i>, lecture 5 of the Gifford lecture series delivered between February 18 and 28, 2013, at the invitation of the University of Edinburgh, available online.<\/p>\n

3 Future Primal<\/i> (2018, 8 min), Songlines<\/i> (2019, 10 min), Rewilding<\/i> (2021, in production), Alchemy<\/i> (in production).<\/p>\n

4\u00a0 <\/span>Kim Stanley Robinson, \u201cScience fiction when the future is now: Six authors parse the implications of our unhinged era for their craft,\u201d Nature<\/i>, December 20, 2017, available online.<\/p>\n

5 Emanuele Coccia, The Life of Plants: A Metaphysics of Mixture<\/i> (Cambridge, MA: Polity Press, 2019), 12.<\/p>\n

6 Latour, \u201cWar of the Worlds: Humans against Earthbound,\u201d available online.<\/p>\n

7 \u201cAnd, in the same way as corals (and lichens), trees also \u2018bring us into consciousness of the Capitalocene\u2019 or inspire \u2018the storied tissues of the thickly present Chthulucene\u2019\u201d in Donna J. Haraway, Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene<\/i> (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2016), 56.<\/p>\n

8 On the ungovernability of forests, see Jean-Baptiste Vidalou, \u00catre for\u00eats. Habiter des territoires en lutte<\/i> (Paris: La D\u00e9couverte, 2017).<\/p>\n

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